


Avant La Lettre

by Sedaris



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Canon Era, Frottage, Hand Jobs, M/M, Not Beta Read, Pining, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-29
Updated: 2013-07-29
Packaged: 2017-12-21 18:09:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/903292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sedaris/pseuds/Sedaris
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grantaire has an informative conversation with an expert on love, and her description of it is not nearly as unfamiliar as it probably should be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Avant La Lettre

**Author's Note:**

> This fanfiction is dedicated my muse and platonic soul mate, Eliza. Were it not for her, this mediocre work would never have been created.

The heat in the Cafe was stifling as the Parisian summer simmered around the collective of inebriated, sweaty students. Though the sun had long since set, its rays were trapped in the meeting, bouncing around the room and striking the young men like soldiers' bullets. A drip of sweat rolled down Enjolras' neck as he talked with Marius, his usually impassioned speech reserved to a single conversation. Grantaire was sitting on a barstool, shamelessly watching them, not that they seemed to notice. 

"He doesn't even pay attention."

He whirled his head to find the source of the statement. Eponine — that clever girl that was always hanging around Marius — was seated next to him, bottle in her hand. She was looking in the same direction he had been, but she was clearly addressing Grantaire.

 "Care to partake?" She asked, limply swirling the dark wine around. He took it from her, never one to turn down a free drink.

"Anyway," she continued, "He never, ever pays attention. The name Thenardier used to mean something. Used to be, used to be proud to have it. Now, I'd give anything to be called Pontmercy. But the silly boy won't look at me like that."

Grantaire was surprised at her openness. True, she was thoroughly drunk, and it had never been anything less than obvious that she had romantic affection for Marius. Still, most people would not be so bold as to say plainly exactly how they felt. Grantaire admired that in a person. Her head snapped up, as if she just remembered that she hadn't properly introduced herself yet.

"It's Grantaire, yes? That's what I've heard them call you. Well, the angry curly one, at least. He calls you that."

Grantaire grinned at her nicknaming Enjolras 'the angry curly one.'  "Yes, my lovely Madame Eponine Thenardier," he answered, with theatrical flourish, "the gentleman you have the unfortunate luck of spending your evening with is indeed Grantaire, the one and only. And thank heavens for that." He took a swig from her bottle.

Her eyes scanned him as he drank, like a scientist observing a bubbling beaker. "You talk so hatefully. Me thinks a broken heart is stored in that alcohol-ravaged body of yours. Have you ever been in love, Grantaire?"

He barked out a laugh. She is a fun one, he thought. "You are one to talk about alcohol-ravaged bodies, lovely Eponine. You would do well to remember that this bottle in my hand belongs to you. And no, I have never loved a woman. I don't believe Les Amis capable, with the exception of Marius, and even that exception is surprising news to me. We are a polarized bunch — most of us are too stupid for love, but some of us are too smart." He gestured to Enjolras. Eponine scoffed.

"Nobody is above loving, or below it. If you truly believe that, then you do not know what love is."

"What is it then, pray tell, lovely Eponine?"

She spoke confidently, as if reciting from a textbook. "Love is bearing the pain inflicted on you by another because it is less than the pain caused by their absence." 

Grantaire was startled. "Surely, that cannot be it. I should think that we all would have done that."

"If you have, then you have felt love. Congratulations, have some more wine."

He did just that. The bottle was now considerably lighter than when Eponine had first arrived, though she'd had more than her fair share of it. He swiped a hand across his mouth. "I am genuinely sorry that our Marius does not feel for you as you would like. I've never met this Cosette of his, but I doubt she is as pleasant company as you. Keep coming to our meetings and provide me with wine and interesting, if flawed conversation, and I might take you for a wife myself."

Eponine smiled. "You flatter me. Though I must ask, what part of our conversation do you find so flawed?" 

"Your insistence that the true definition of love is the tolerance of pain for the sake of another. Can't someone feel that way in camaraderie, rather than romance?"

Eponine looked thoughtful, considering. "Well, I suppose so, though there are other factors that could signal that one is in love."

"And what may those factors be?" He asked, feeling oddly invested in her philosophy. 

"My, Grantaire, you certainly are curious for someone who seems so vehemently against the idea of love. Well, for starters, there are the physical signs. A low burning in your stomach when the loved one is near. A rising heat that causes you heart to beat faster and slower at the same time once it reaches your chest, and makes your cheeks flush red once it gets to your head. It's like — well, not that much unlike being drunk, I suppose. There are also emotional signs — bitter humiliation and blooming happiness fight for your attention when you think of them."

"Lovely Eponine, I am sorry to tell you that you are still mistaken. I have experienced all of what you speak, and I am not in love."

"Dearest Grantaire — and believe that you are dear to me, now, for it's not often that I am granted the opportunity to confess my feelings like this — I beg you to consider the possibility that you are, in fact, in love. It is not the worst thing, no matter how often it seems that way. It is awful, I would not wish it on anyone, but it is worth it. I do not know the greedy girl who has managed to steal your affections, but trust me that it is always, always worth it. Now, Grantaire, forgive me, but the hour is late, and anyway, I feel the alcohol churning my bowels. If I do not leave soon, my dignity will surely be spilt all over your shoes. Good night."

She got up, staggering slightly, and made to leave. Grantaire gripped her arm.   
"Lovely Eponine, you are right when you say that the hour is late. Please, allow me to walk you home, for the streets are not safe for a lonesome young woman, especially one of your beauty and drunkenness." She patted his hand, and he released her. 

"Monsieur, while your concern is charming, I know these streets better than the contractors who designed them. I know the dwellings of every beggar, I know every corner of every alley. I will be fine. Oh, I do hope to see you soon. Good luck with your anonymous beloved." He nodded at her, and she left the Cafe. He noticed that he still gripped her bottle in his hand when Marius and Enjolras approached him. 

"Was that Eponine?" Marius asked, worried.

"Yes, and I must say, Marius, she is really rather excellent. I am glad to see that Les Amis are not an accurate representation of the sort of people you choose as friends."

Enjolras rolled his eyes. "You let her leave alone, at night, obviously intoxicated?"

Grantaire felt a familiar heat stirring in his gut, and he recalled Eponine's confident words. 

"Not without offering to escort her, of course, I am a respectable man. But she seemed able to handle herself perfectly well. I would not doubt her."

Marius nodded. "Grantaire is probably right. She is one of the strongest people I've ever known, and I pity the man who'd attempt to hurt her."  
   
Grantaire felt a pang of sorrow at the knowledge that it was, in fact, Marius who'd hurt her worst. Enjolras, placated, returned to his business-like demeanor.

"Grantaire, please come with me. I would like to talk to you." 

Grantaire, surprised, obliged. He followed Enjolras to the room he used for speech-writing, which was covered in half-finished essays and oily inkwells. Enjolras leaned against the wall, looking down at the scratched-up floorboards. 

"I have thought about what you asked me before," he started, without looking up. "About giving you another chance to help the cause. I have decided that I may have a job for you, if you will answer a question for me."

"For you, anything." Grantaire answered, excited. He had not expected to be given a second chance. Enjolras looked up slowly, his eyes analyzing.

"Why do you care so much about helping the cause, when you've made it clear that you do not believe in it?"

Grantaire's heart sank into his belly, and Eponine's slurred voice swam laps in his mind. 

"Because, Enjolras, there would be no you without the cause. You could rally us to arms for anything, and, whether I believed in it or not, I'd always pick up my pistol."

"I still do not understand."

The pounding beats of Grantaire's heart seemed to force his feet forward, stepping closer to Enjolras until there were only a few discarded scrolls on the floor between them. Thinking better of it, he turned around and walked quickly to the other side of the room, sinking down and slumping against the wall. He glanced up to find Enjolras staring at him curiously, and he quickly looked down again. 

"Forgive me. I had a very confusing conversation with a wonderful girl."

"Eponine?"

"Yes."

"What has she got to do with anything?"

"She was talking to me about love. She's something of an expert, you understand. And it seems that I may be under the curse of affection myself, though trust me to read life's map wrong and find it in the wrong sort of person. Couldn't be a soft woman from the market, like that girl that Marius has, oh no. That would be too proper for me. I suppose I am a Greek through and through, though that is only fitting, seeing as you are Apollo."

Enjolras threw up his hands, annoyed. "Grantaire, I had underestimated how drunk you are. You are far too inebriated to talk of plans for reclaiming Patria, as every word seems to be babble about love and Eponine. If you love Eponine, I am sorry to tell you that she is quite obviously interested in Pontmercy."

"I am not too drunk, I am merely not effectively communicating. Frustrating, but not inebriated."

"Then do try harder, for you are testing my patience."

"Come over here." Enjolras, for once, did as he was told. Grantaire grabbed his hand and yanked, bringing him down to his level. He buried his hands in Enjolras' sweaty, curling locks, pressing their foreheads together. 

"You yell at me every time, every single time I come. You shout abuses about my drunkenness and my uselessness, and it does hurt. But I find that it hurts much worse to be away for too long, and I should have known before what that meant." He opened his eyes to find Enjolras staring, confused and even a little frightened, but uncharacteristically silent. Grantaire continued. 

"I'm an artist by trade, you know. It is how I afford school and my apartment and wine. Mostly, I just make copies of paintings by others for mass sale. But I'm still an artist nonetheless." He nodded  his head against Enjolras'. "I've always thought that you were beautiful. Always. And I'd thought that it was because I'm an artist, and I can find objective, impersonal beauty in things. I see it all the time. But it is different with you, I think, because when I notice a particularly beautiful flower, its image does not keep me awake at night. Nor does its details plague my world — with you, I see your hair in the most expensive woven baskets carried by the upperclass, and I see the excitement of your smile when you speak of revolution in the faces of children playing in the streets. If I did original work, I'd have asked you to pose for me long ago, because I feel as though I could capture every inch of France in one portrait of you. I think, now, that that is about more than being an artist." 

Enjolras was looking at him now with a kind of shocked wonder, as if the King himself had just announced that he was abdicating the throne. "No one has ever...has ever said anything of this sort to me before. Nor have I heard it said to anyone else. It is...awfully intimate." He looked away and his tongue darted between his lips instinctively, giving a quick lick. "Well, I...appreciate this...gesture, this gesture of...of friendship. It is unexpected. Absolutely, it is unexpected. I have never heard you sound so sincere before. It is...nice."

It was then that Grantaire leaned forward and kissed Enjolras, a hard press of experimenting lips. Enjolras pulled back, sputtering a startled "What are you doing?"

Deeply ashamed, Grantaire pushed himself up, ready to run from the Cafe Musain and not return for a very long while. Enjolras grabbed his arm and pulled him back, bringing their lips together once more. He pushed Grantaire against the wall, their bodies pressed together, his thigh between Grantaire's legs. They both stopped for a minute, looking at each other, and Grantaire released a nervous breath.  Enjolras swallowed the end of it, and their mouths fought with fervor. 

"How can a heart beat faster and slower at once?" Grantaire whispered, through bitemark-riddled lips.

"Excuse me?" Enjolras managed to pant out, reaching a hand out to undo Grantaire's cravat. He replaced the hand with his mouth, sucking the blushing skin. Grantaire's head rolled back instinctively, providing Enjolras with more neck to explore.

"Surely, such a feat could only be accomplished through most unusual power," Grantaire supplied, through unsteady breaths, "Of course you would be the one to wield it, who else but our fearless leader could so easily laugh in the face of logic and reason? Contradiction suits you, you foolish, ambitious beauty."

Enjolras bit down on his shoulder, and Grantaire melted, murmuring, "France does not deserve you." 

He had not thought that Enjolras would have heard him, but it was apparent that he did, as he pulled away to look Grantaire in the eyes.

"Do you?" He challenged, steely. 

"Oh, no," Grantaire answered, shaking his head slightly, "Never. I could not even pretend. But France does not dream of you or ache in your presence. Nor does she long to hold you close, to feel if a heart really could beat within a fine marble statue." Grantaire wrapped his arms around him, reeling him back in, so that their torsos touched. "And if Patria had felt that heart beat faster after a kiss she had so wrongfully taken in the letter-writing room of a frequented Cafe, she would not feel as though the sun itself was exploding from her ribcage. And if she were to know the press of your tongue against her neck, her bones would not become like candlewax in the presence of a flame." 

Enjolras had not ceased staring at him, and Grantaire trailed a thumb against his cheek, vaguely surprised to find how warm it was. He continued on.

"I belong to the revolution because I know, as surely as I know the taste of absinthe, that I belong where you are. You do not want me, you often tell me so when we are among our friends and I have drunk too much, and I have tried to stay away. I truly have. You have not noticed, I am sure, because I have never succeeded in keeping my distance for a noteworthy amount of time. I nearly managed a whole week, once, before I was gripped with such sadness that could only be relieved by your company. I am a cynic, you understand, and one cannot bear the world as I see it for very long. I yearn to see it as you do — malleable, able to be changed if you only want it enough. Your presence makes the world different— impossible things can happen, like my heart beating simultaneously faster and slower, it's coldness dissolving. Though I have not been able to name what I've felt, I've known, since it started, that I care about it. It matters to me, this feeling you give me, as nothing else does. So, though your attempt to overthrow the government is inevitably futile, you will not die without having done the impossible. I will die as the thing you impossibly changed, and with that I am satisfied."

Having nothing left to say, he waited for Enjolras to react. But he just continued to stare, as if frozen, and Grantaire began to grow nervous, fearing that he'd ruined everything. Just then, Enjolras came to life, throwing Grantaire to the floor. He straddled him and, slipping his hands between the folds of his shirt, ripped the buttons open. Grantaire quickly undid the string on his pants and reached out fumbling hands to undo Enjolras'. He peppered Grantaire's stomach with wet, biting kisses, reaching a hand down his now-loosened pants. He stroked him off, and Grantaire forgot to be courteous, digging his fingers into the wood floorboards instead of wrapping them around Enjolras. Enjolras didn't seem to mind or notice, and he ground his hips against Grantaire's. It was quick and firey, for while Grantaire did have more experience than the virginal Enjolras, he did not have much more. They came together, and Grantaire pulled Enjolras down by his neck, nipping his ear, whispering unheard words of affection. Enjolras took his hand and brought it forward, tenderly pressing his lips against the knuckles. He rolled over and they laid side-by-side, sweaty from summer heat and lust and nerves.

Enjolras, usually stony and overly-mature, turned to Grantaire and said, "I feel young." 

Grantaire grinned, entwining their fingers together, staring at their hands as he did so. "You are young, Enjolras."

Enjolras looked up at the ceiling. "Funny, I've never really thought so."

Grantaire laughed breathily at that, his heart swelling with happiness. "Apollo, you are a god."

Enjolras glanced down to where Grantaire's gaze was fixed, on their interwoven hands. 

"And you, Grantaire, are impossible."


End file.
